Ignorance or avoidance of a problematic doctrine?

[bluebell]

12 hours ago, rongo said:

True, but it also doesn't automatically equal an incorrect one, either. Whether or not something is true depends on whether it is true or not, not the iterations of teaching and disavowal or neglect. 

Maybe we only thought we knew then, and don't know now. Maybe we really did know then, and are wrongly neglecting, deemphasizing, and disavowing now --- but it would sure be nice to have someone with keys actually talk about it. We just have deemphasis and radio silence. 

I really wish that when doctrine is changed or "nuanced," explanations were given explaining the thought process and addressing the obvious concerns over that course of action. 

Agreed.

More information would always be nice.  I'm curious by nature and want to understand how things work and it annoys me when I don't understand the process behind things.  But in regards to the bold, I know that nice doesn't equal necessary.  Especially with these peripheral beliefs.  

People don't need keys to get their own revelations on many (all?) of these things.  But they do need authority to teach them to other people as truth (for the most part) and I think that's a struggle for some people.  

[bluebell]

3 hours ago, CA Steve said:

How about you? Are there any current authorized teachings you feel are not correct ones?

For the most part our authorized teachings are very principle based now, so probably not.  But maybe there is something and I'm just not remembering it right now.  

I do have some questions about some ways that our leaders are choosing to interpret the doctrines that we have surrounding SS relationships, but so far they are questions and not conclusions on how correct they are.

[bluebell]

2 hours ago, Teancum said:

So if the church leaders once taught something about God being a mortal man and experiencing a moral life like we are, and if it was spoken of not infrequently for decade upon decade, the fact that it is not taught now means it is not doctrine and we do not know much about it.  Is this your point?  If yes what good are prophets and apostles. It seems if we become uncomfortable with a prior teaching we just ignore it and hope it goes away and then say " I don't know that we teach that." 

 

I don't have a lot of time right now so I'll just address this paragraph and try to get to the others later.

But my thoughts are:

• No I'm not saying that it's not doctrine that God was once mortal like we are.  In my opinion what isn't doctrine are some of the interpretations that have been extrapolated from that doctrine.  Such as that God was once a sinful man who needed His own Savior to perform an Atonement on His behalf to be exalted, for example. That belief isn't doctrine.  
• The role of prophets and apostles is to teach the gospel of Christ (Faith on Christ, repentance, baptism, gift of the Holy Ghost, and how to stay on the covenant path) and to testify of Him to the world.  That's what they are good for.
• You keep implying that people are backing away from the idea that God was once a sinful man because it's become uncomfortable, but that's your assumption and has nothing to do with anything that I have said.  I think we are backing away from it because it's not based on any actual revelation.

[Teancum]

1 hour ago, manol said:

I understand your point, having also grown up in that older, bolder day.  Nor have I had a dog in the fight for many years now.  But imo better that modern LDS Church leaders make course-corrections by whatever means rather than circling the wagons for the sake of defending an unwarranted-in-retrospect traditional belief.

Was it simply a traditional belief?

[rongo]

57 minutes ago, bluebell said:

I do have some questions about some ways that our leaders are choosing to interpret the doctrines that we have surrounding SS relationships . . .

I'm curious what these questions are, if you don't mind elaborating. If you'd rather not, that's okay, too.

Thanks!

[Teancum]

46 minutes ago, bluebell said:

I don't have a lot of time right now so I'll just address this paragraph and try to get to the others later.

But my thoughts are:

• No I'm not saying that it's not doctrine that God was once mortal like we are.  In my opinion what isn't doctrine are some of the interpretations that have been extrapolated from that doctrine.  Such as that God was once a sinful man who needed His own Savior to perform an Atonement on His behalf to be exalted, for example. That belief isn't doctrine.  

I don't know of any qualifications either way. Though I think you can extrapolate from the KFD the idea that the father was a savior of a world like Jesus is for this world.  On the other hand we do have a lot of LDS leaders saying the God was a man like we are.

I am not sure what difference it makes.  Does the church teach that men and women like we are, sinful and fallen, can be exalted, create and people worlds or not?  If it does why the concern that God the Father may have been amortal like us?  But regardless, I am not splitting the points on this. My point is that there is plenty out there that talks about God being a mortal person.

46 minutes ago, bluebell said:

• The role of prophets and apostles is to teach the gospel of Christ (Faith on Christ, repentance, baptism, gift of the Holy Ghost, and how to stay on the covenant path) and to testify of Him to the world.  That's what they are good for.

I don't know where this idea comes from that apostles and prosimpy do what you describe above.  That may be one of their rolls but it does not end there.  The seems like a watered down correlated idea.

46 minutes ago, bluebell said:

• You keep implying that people are backing away from the idea that God was once a sinful man because it's become uncomfortable, but that's your assumption and has nothing to do with anything that I have said.  I think we are backing away from it because it's not based on any actual revelation.

I don't think I made the distinction between God being and exalted man that was mortal and sinful vs something like maybe Jesus was.  It is you who are making that distinction not me.

[manol]

37 minutes ago, Teancum said:

Was it simply a traditional belief?

I think "as man is, God once was" could be called a "traditional" belief, being Lorenzo Snow's poetic paraphrasing of something Joseph Smith said in the King Follet sermon, as over the years since Joseph's sermon there has not been much if any additional supporting explanation.  Maybe there is a better word. 

My main point is that course-correction is a very good thing to incorporate into a thought system, and even when the specific "correction" itself needs to be corrected, the principle of course-correction is what allows/facilitates progress.  (My reservation about crystalizing beliefs into creeds, poetic or otherwise, is that creeds function as effective inhibitors of relevant course-correction.) 

Edited July 6, 2022 by manol

[Teancum]

14 hours ago, bluebell said:

But BRM didn't actually know who those verses in Nephi were speaking of.  He just strongly believed he did and taught members his opinion on the subject.  His authority didn't stop him from being wrong though. 

I have no doubt McConkie would reject your conclusion and ask you by what authority you were attempting to correct him by?

[pogi]

5 hours ago, CA Steve said:

You got 7 rep points for this so far. When I look at those names, I have to wonder how many of them would accept this statement from a critic, especially the bolded part. 

I just made it 8 rep points.  Looking at those names, I think all of them would happily accept that statement ("an authorized explanation doesn't automatically equal a correct one").  I don't perceive any of them as supporting the idea of infallible leaders.  

5 hours ago, CA Steve said:

And, how does one differentiate between what we think we know and what we actually know? 

If you are asking how can we be certain that what we think we know corresponds with things as they really are (the correspondence theory of truth) - the answer is, you can't.  Not in mortality anyway.  We walk by faith in mortality.

[mfbukowski]

14 hours ago, rongo said:

True, but it also doesn't automatically equal an incorrect one, either. Whether or not something is true depends on whether it is true or not, not the iterations of teaching and disavowal or neglect. 

Maybe we only thought we knew then, and don't know now. Maybe we really did know then, and are wrongly neglecting, deemphasizing, and disavowing now --- but it would sure be nice to have someone with keys actually talk about it. We just have deemphasis and radio silence. 

I really wish that when doctrine is changed or "nuanced," explanations were given explaining the thought process and addressing the obvious concerns over that course of action. 

I simply think we need to understand that no one "knows" anything about anything with absolute certainty- what we need to understand is that we live in a world of stories and theories which allow us to progress in areas of alleged "knowledge"- that is, to find better ways of believing, better scientific theories, and better ways to "make things go"

Nearly all contemporary philosophers take a position that there is no such thing as a "true" statement or observation about the world around us which we see as being any more than WHAT WE SEE and experience.  In other words, there is what we observe and what explanations we come up with to justify belief in the theories we follow.

So the story is that Newton "discovered" gravity when he observed an apple falling.  He NOTICED a phenomenon that everyone before had taken for granted, and he decided to investigate it.  

Since then we bult better and better theories about gravity- but yet according to physicists, we STILL do not have "ALL there is to know about gravity" and never will because any provisional answers we have simply bring up new questions.

By definition. "progress" always progresses!   There is no end to refinement of "what we know" and when we look back at "what we knew then" it will always look kind of primitive and silly!

Physicists tend to agree.  There is a well- accepted principle called the "observer effect" that shows that the mere observation of the phenomena can change the results of the experiment.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)

The bottom line is that we make up stories about "truth" until another better theory comes along, but (at least in this side of the veil) we will never get the "full picture" because further questioning always brings up ..... further questioning!!

But people want "TRVTH" chiseled on a Greek temple wall, a truth that is absolute and unchanging.

Ain't gonna happen.  There's always another way to see it, another "why", another question because we STILL will be chasing a final truth that will never change, but unfortunately never existed

And so the church is stuck.   Here we are believing in an "open Canon" AND at the same time believing in "absolute truth"!!!

How the heck do you square personal revelation with "absolute,/ end of the line,/ finished and done with/, "Here it is -no more questioning" / TRVTH?

Impossible!!

Time to grow up and stop believing in children's stories and start actually BELIEVING in continuing revelation!!

"But they changed a word in the temple ceremony"!!  

Uh, yeah, that's their job!

It goes back to that old Protestant error that now that we have the Bible we have ALL revelation that God wants to give us- no new scripture- closed canon, ALL of "TRVTH"

[mfbukowski]

43 minutes ago, Teancum said:

I have no doubt McConkie would reject your conclusion and ask you by what authority you were attempting to correct him by?

The same Authorities that wanted him to not re-publish Mormon Doctrine

 

[webbles]

31 minutes ago, manol said:

I think "as man is, God once was" could be called a "traditional" belief, being Lorenzo Snow's poetic paraphrasing of something Joseph Smith said in the King Follet sermon, as over the years since Joseph's sermon there has not been much if any additional supporting explanation.  Maybe there is a better word. 

Interestingly, the couplet is not a paraphrasing of the King Follet sermon.  I had thought that as well but President Snow said that it came to him in 1840.  See https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1982/02/i-have-a-question/is-president-snows-statement-as-man-now-is-god-once-was-as-god-now-is-man-may-be-accepted-as-official-doctrine?lang=eng&id=html for some of the background of the couplet.

 

[Tacenda]

1 hour ago, manol said:

I think "as man is, God once was" could be called a "traditional" belief, being Lorenzo Snow's poetic paraphrasing of something Joseph Smith said in the King Follet sermon, as over the years since Joseph's sermon there has not been much if any additional supporting explanation.  Maybe there is a better word. 

My main point is that course-correction is a very good thing to incorporate into a thought system, and even when the specific "correction" itself needs to be corrected, the principle of course-correction is what allows/facilitates progress.  (My reservation about crystalizing beliefs into creeds, poetic or otherwise, is that creeds function as effective inhibitors of relevant course-correction.) 

Here is an explanation by not sure who said it, it's in the Journal of Discourses. To sum it up, it's basically true there is only one God....per world, and there are hundreds or thousands of them:

https://books.google.com/books?id=Hm8tAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA345&lpg=PA345&dq=did+joseph+smith+always+believe+that+men+can+be+gods+and+god+was+once+a+man?&source=bl&ots=RbWyoq0DvI&sig=ACfU3U3zU00COgXKFgu1vh08Z1Fy5LxdbQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwib3LqI8-T4AhWKD0QIHYqSARIQ6AF6BAg9EAM#v=onepage&q=did joseph smith always believe that men can be gods and god was once a man%3F&f=false

[Scott Lloyd]

18 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

The same Authorities that wanted him to not re-publish Mormon Doctrine

 

And if I recall correctly, the content applying Nephi’s prophecy to the Catholic Church was omitted from later editions of Mormon Doctrine — and this happened long before his call to the Quorum of the Twelve. 
 

So I think we can safely conclude that not only would he be willing to accept correction on this point, he had already done so many years before his death. 

[Teancum]

40 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

The same Authorities that wanted him to not re-publish Mormon Doctrine

 

Yes he did it anyway.  And to what end?  Was he disciplined?  Was the work repudiated?  Nope and Nope.

[pogi]

58 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

I simply think we need to understand that no one "knows" anything about anything with absolute certainty- what we need to understand is that we live in a world of stories and theories which allow us to progress in areas of alleged "knowledge"- that is, to find better ways of believing, better scientific theories, and better ways to "make things go"

Nearly all contemporary philosophers take a position that there is no such thing as a "true" statement or observation about the world around us which we see as being any more than WHAT WE SEE and experience.  In other words, there is what we observe and what explanations we come up with to justify belief in the theories we follow.

So the story is that Newton "discovered" gravity when he observed an apple falling.  He NOTICED a phenomenon that everyone before had taken for granted, and he decided to investigate it.  

Since then we bult better and better theories about gravity- but yet according to physicists, we STILL do not have "ALL there is to know about gravity" and never will because any provisional answers we have simply bring up new questions.

By definition. "progress" always progresses!   There is no end to refinement of "what we know" and when we look back at "what we knew then" it will always look kind of primitive and silly!

Physicists tend to agree.  There is a well- accepted principle called the "observer effect" that shows that the mere observation of the phenomena can change the results of the experiment.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)

The bottom line is that we make up stories about "truth" until another better theory comes along, but (at least in this side of the veil) we will never get the "full picture" because further questioning always brings up ..... further questioning!!

But people want "TRVTH" chiseled on a Greek temple wall, a truth that is absolute and unchanging.

Ain't gonna happen.  There's always another way to see it, another "why", another question because we STILL will be chasing a final truth that will never change, but unfortunately never existed

And so the church is stuck.   Here we are believing in an "open Canon" AND at the same time believing in "absolute truth"!!!

How the heck do you square personal revelation with "absolute,/ end of the line,/ finished and done with/, "Here it is -no more questioning" / TRVTH?

Impossible!!

Time to grow up and stop believing in children's stories and start actually BELIEVING in continuing revelation!!

"But they changed a word in the temple ceremony"!!  

Uh, yeah, that's their job!

It goes back to that old Protestant error that now that we have the Bible we have ALL revelation that God wants to give us- no new scripture- closed canon, ALL of "TRVTH"

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, rongo said:

I'm curious what these questions are, if you don't mind elaborating. If you'd rather not, that's okay, too.

Thanks!

I can't think of anything specific off of the top of my head, but in general I have questions on how the culture of past generations concerning lgtbq+ issues impacts the way that our leaders interpret our doctrine around marriage and the family today.

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, Teancum said:

I don't know of any qualifications either way. Though I think you can extrapolate from the KFD the idea that the father was a savior of a world like Jesus is for this world.  On the other hand we do have a lot of LDS leaders saying the God was a man like we are.

I am not sure what difference it makes.  Does the church teach that men and women like we are, sinful and fallen, can be exalted, create and people worlds or not?  If it does why the concern that God the Father may have been amortal like us?  But regardless, I am not splitting the points on this. My point is that there is plenty out there that talks about God being a mortal person.

I don't know where this idea comes from that apostles and prosimpy do what you describe above.  That may be one of their rolls but it does not end there.  The seems like a watered down correlated idea.

I don't think I made the distinction between God being and exalted man that was mortal and sinful vs something like maybe Jesus was.  It is you who are making that distinction not me.

The distinction exists, neither one of us has to make it.  As you said, theologically the difference doesn't matter--and I personally think that either option could be the true one with no problems--but the distinction exists whether it matters theologically or not.

Like you said, it doesn't matter which one is right, but they can't both be right and we have zero revelation which one is wrong.  In the past leaders taught things as if we knew exactly what kind of mortal life our Father in Heaven had but now (in my opinion) we are coming to terms with the gaps in our knowledge and proceeding more cautiously.  

Some, like Rongo, would say too cautiously. 

(To the bold, agreed it's not all they do, but it is their main purpose.  I think that some of our discomfort with prophets and the contradiction between their fallibility and our need to "follow the prophet so we don't go astray" is because we don't challenge our expectations of what a prophet is and does.  Some of that is, I think, a carryover from earlier decades of unchallenged expectations.  If that makes sense).

[bluebell]

2 hours ago, Teancum said:

I have no doubt McConkie would reject your conclusion and ask you by what authority you were attempting to correct him by?

McConkie was corrected by those in authority above him, I'm just repeating what they said.   

[bluebell]

41 minutes ago, Teancum said:

Yes he did it anyway.  And to what end?  Was he disciplined?  Was the work repudiated?  Nope and Nope.

He edited it to take the stuff out that they asked him to take out.

[Scott Lloyd]

1 hour ago, Tacenda said:

Here is an explanation by not sure who said it, it's in the Journal of Discourses. To sum it up, it's basically true there is only one God....per world, and there are hundreds or thousands of them:

https://books.google.com/books?id=Hm8tAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA345&lpg=PA345&dq=did+joseph+smith+always+believe+that+men+can+be+gods+and+god+was+once+a+man?&source=bl&ots=RbWyoq0DvI&sig=ACfU3U3zU00COgXKFgu1vh08Z1Fy5LxdbQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwib3LqI8-T4AhWKD0QIHYqSARIQ6AF6BAg9EAM#v=onepage&q=did joseph smith always believe that men can be gods and god was once a man%3F&f=false

Going by your summary without bothering to view the link, I can’t accept this, because it conflicts with scripture, namely Moses 1:30-33:

And behold, the glory of the Lord was upon Moses, so that Moses stood in the presence of God, and talked with him face to face. And the Lord God said unto Moses: For mine own purpose have I made these things. Here is wisdom and it remaineth in me.
32 And by the word of my power, have I created them, which is mine Only Begotten Son, who is full of grace and truth.
33 And worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose; and by the Son I created them, which is mine Only Begotten.

Furthermore, Journal of Discourses is unreliable as an exposition of doctrine.    We can’t even be certain whether the discourses were transcribed correctly. From research conducted by LaJean Carruth, an expert on the Pitman shorthand used to record the sermons, we know that some (many?) were not. 

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, Teancum said:

Yes he did it anyway.  And to what end?  Was he disciplined?  Was the work repudiated?  Nope and Nope.

Seriously?

Mormon Doctrine is pretty much repudiated as are writings even by other family members who were influential in influencing BRM himself

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, Obehave said:

People often repudiate what is truth and yet the truth remains true regardless.  That concept isn't new to you, is it?

No, just incoherent.   Define "true"

Or better yet, don't.  It will take up too much time to discuss and you won't listen anyway.

[bluebell]

19 hours ago, rongo said:

 

Both of these are but two examples (the young missionary from around 2010 I referred to earlier is actually too young to have grown up with the "old" teachings, but even he felt the disconnect of "the shift" on this). Apologetic spin comes across as "Baghdad Bob," and isn't effective when what people feel in their heart and memory runs counter to the "Today, we disavow . . ." approach to past teaching that is being deemphasized or recast. People's concerns are much more in the emotional arena, rather than the intellectual, and "FAIR-esque" explanations don't do well when sailing into those headwinds. 

I can't remember.  Did you say that you were a member of FAIR for a while?

[Teancum]

2 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Seriously?

Mormon Doctrine is pretty much repudiated as are writings even by other family members who were influential in influencing BRM himself

Are you serious?  The book was never publicly repudiated and for a very long time was next the the standard works on most Mormon's bookshelves.  Interesting how you paint an alternative reality on such things.  The only repudiation is it has quietly faded away.

But hey lets just toss Elder McConkie under the bus since we no longer like what he said and he is long since dead.  Such is the ever changing world of Mormonism.

Edited July 6, 2022 by Teancum